Now that everyone who saw and enjoyed A Cinderella Story and Sydney White has graduated from high school and moved on to the next stage of their movie viewing habits, it's time for Hollywood to start churning out a new generation of updated fairy tale movies for a fresh crop of kids who haven't seen enough to know any better. Would it be nice if they made something more original or even slightly more sophisticated than Beastly is? Of course, but why put in all that effort? Judging from the success of The Twilight Saga, it's not like the target audience who wants this would care much either way.

Hayden Christensen. John Leguizamo. Thandie Newton. When I heard that three of my least favorite actors were going to be in a movie together, I knew I had to see it. Sure, it didn't have John Travolta or Katherine Heigl, but let's not get carried away, here. We don't want people to hurt themselves. The plot didn't even matter -- it looked like a sci-fi horror movie to me, and that's all I needed to know. As long as everyone got to over-act, and then be annoyingly glib with each other, I would be happy, and in that respect the film didn't disappoint. Unfortunately, the plot left a lot to be desired, and the cast spends the entire movie fighting off darkness and shadows with flashlights. Hayden Christensen once taught us to never underestimate the power of the dark side, but it's not enough to base an entire movie on.

It seems like over the last decade there's been a veritable cavalcade of movies about exorcisms, hauntings and paranormal activity, so it's hard to build up any enthusiasm for yet another one. But Sir Anthony Hopkins is a game-changer. Having such a fine actor in such a formulaic genre film, even one purportedly based on a true story (but aren't they all?) seems like a waste, but at the same time it's always fun to see the man really cut loose, as he did in Dracula and The Wolfman and a dozen other horror and thriller movies. Add this one to his list of masterful performances, because he single-handedly makes the movie a horror staple.

Today is Nicolas Cage's birthday. It's also the day the first mainstream release of 2011 comes out, which just so happens to be Cage's first attempt at playing a character who didn't live during the industrial age. Fans of Cage's famous (on-screen) freak-outs will probably cackle with glee at the thought of him throwing one in a castle courtyard (think Ray Liotta as a wizard in In the Name of the King), but I'm happy to see his overly serious delivery placed in a context where it actually makes sense, something we got to see a little bit of in last year's Sorcerer's Apprentice. Granted, serious Cage isn't as fun as manic Cage, but in Season of the Witch, he gets to act noble in a time when nobility actually meant something, and it's okay for him to act holier-than-thou when he has a big fricking cross on his chest. He probably should have done one of these movies years ago, because Season is better than a significant portion of his recent output. That's not saying much, but it certainly says something.

Nicolas Cage may be the star of the new medieval action-horror movie Season of the Witch, but he wouldn't last through the opening credits without his wingman, played by Ron Perlman. As a pair of Crusaders escorting a witch to trial through plague-infested Europe, Cage and Perlman's characters make great use of their shared history as soldiers, and Perlman steals his scenes with his wit and charm. We talked exclusively to the Sons of Anarchy and Hellboy star about the role, his co-stars, and what's next for him as Clay Morrow and as Hellboy himself.

When Darren Aronofsky was announced as the director of the next Wolverine movie, it was a bit of a shock, considering that the man was not known for his high-octane action pieces, and the last installment had exploding helicopters. But between the nightmare world of Requiem for a Dream, the sci-fi epicness of The Fountain and the physical pain and loneliness depicted in The Wrestler, I had confidence that the man would deliver the best Wolverine film -- maybe even X-Men film -- to date. And after seeing Black Swan, with its hallucinatory psychodrama, I am 100% sold, because I came out of the movie wanting to see more comic-book adventures of Natalie Portman's split-personality character. Maybe if I were a ballet fan, I might have wanted to see more of the ballet itself, but I guess it says a lot about me that I'd rather watch her fight Batman.

It's not really fair to compare Monsters to Cloverfield. True, both follow young people as they travel through a war zone to reunite with loved ones, while a battle is being fought between the military and a giant monster who remains largely unseen until halfway through the movie. But that's where the comparisons end. While Cloverfield is captured on shaky, hand-held cameras in one of the biggest cities in the world, Monsters is a mostly uneventful trip through the jungles of Mexico, and the main character, a photographer, is more interested in the quiet moments than in seeing any action. While not without its action scenes, the movie is actually mostly quiet moments, and the depiction of a country ravaged by these creatures is more important than the creatures themselves.

You would think that Paranormal Activity 2 would be less scary than the first one, since we've seen all of the home-movie format's tricks, and the sequel takes place in a house full of people, including a baby and a guard dog. Well, you'd be wrong, because PA2 somehow manages to be more frightening, even as it builds on the first film's minimal mythology. Yes, it repeats a few scares from the first movie, and has enough generic scares in it that could be from any horror movie, but the fact remains that they're still pants-pissingly delivered. I'm not going to say that seeing it alone in a small, nearly empty budget theater in the back of a discount store wouldn't help, but I'll assume it was just as scary for those in stadium seating.

Halloween can certainly be a dangerous time of year, whether you're a drunk teenager with obscured vision on your way to a kegger or a child wandering the streets asking strangers for candy. (Or, if you're the adult who's on the road or at home and has to deal with them.) But real Halloween will never be as dangerous as movie Halloween, so when you're looking for safety tips to get you through the holidays, just pop in a movie -- they've already thought of every worst-case scenario.

The box office numbers are in, and while The Social Network easily took number one for the weekend, the weekend's other new release (not counting the long-delayed Case 39) barely cracked the Top Ten. Let Me In is the remake of the Swedish film Let the Right One In, about a young vampire girl who moves into an apartment complex, next door to a bullied boy. It only pulled in $5.3 million, which puts it in eighth place, and raises the question, "Why bother remaking a movie that's only two years old, especially if you're going to remake it exactly?"